Residents of the Jawaharnagar suburb of Hyderabad reiterated their long-pending demand for an integrated school for classes 1 to 12, at a public hearing held on Friday, April 10. The area is home to many migrant workers, mainly from the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Backward Class communities. It also houses Hyderabad’s main dumpyard, spanning over 300 acres.
While a school was sanctioned by the education authorities of the Medchal-Malkajgiri district after a struggle led by residents, the allotted land has remained under litigation, leaving many children unable to attend school.
According to child rights worker Himabindu, who works in the area, a survey of 662 families living in five slums of Jawaharnagar – Gabbilalpet, Rajiv Gandhi Nagar, Shanti Nagar, Giri Prasad Nagar, and Nandamuri Nagar – revealed that at least 136 children aged 6-18 were out of school as of December 2025.
Sura Venkataiah, a resident and convener of the Jawaharnagar Prabhutva Pathasala Sadhana Committee, spoke at the public hearing and said that the area, which includes nearly 100 slum settlements, is estimated to have a population of nearly 3 lakh people, including around 1.2 lakh children under 18.
Yet, Jawaharnagar has only two government high schools, nine primary schools, and 22 anganwadi centres to cater to these children, according to the Committee. There is no government junior college not just in Jawaharnagar but in the entire Kapra mandal where the area is located.
Many of the residents depend on daily wage work, construction work, or garbage collection and ragpicking for livelihood. Most of them cannot afford private schools, and in the absence of government schools, many young children are vulnerable to child labour, child marriages, and child sexual abuse, residents said.
Himabindu also said that many of the residents are from nomadic communities, such as Budaga Jangala, who often do not possess documents such as birth certificates and Aadhaar, which is an additional hurdle to gaining admission to schools.
The Committee is demanding an integrated Telangana Public School in the Gabbilalpet area. The Telangana government recently announced that model Telangana Public Schools offering high-quality, integrated education from pre-primary through Class 12 at a single institution would be opened as a pilot project in 100 constituencies across the state, outside Hyderabad, from the coming academic year.
Residents of Gabbilalpet and surrounding areas, who spoke at the public hearing, said that the nearest schools were 2-4 kms away, most of them already exceeding their capacity and inaccessible due to poor connectivity.
Yashoda, a single mother with three children, said that her two elder daughters are studying in the Balaji Nagar government school, which is nearly 4 kms away from the Gabbilalpet bus stop. “My second daughter has frequent health issues, but she still manages to study well. She cannot travel on her own, and my oldest daughter, who now accompanies her, is going to complete her schooling soon. Having an integrated school till Class 12 nearby would make a big difference for parents like us, who cannot always take time off from work,” she said at the meeting.
The public hearing in Gabbilalpet was attended by parents, community leaders, a panel comprising academic and education activist Professor K Laxminarayana, Ravi Kanneganti of Telangana People's Joint Action Committee, Communist Party of India (CPI) leader K Narayana, academic and activist Sujatha Surepally, and others.
The Committee, comprising around 15 residents, has been demanding a new government school for Gabbilalpet since 2021. The district education department inaugurated a primary school in a rented building in Gabbilalpet in January 2023, with nearly 80 children, mainly first-generation learners, starting to attend immediately. However, Venkataiah said that the school had to be run with contributions from the community itself until June 2025, when the government finally deputed three teachers and started providing mid-day meals, uniforms, and textbooks.
The school now caters to 120 students enrolled in Classes 1 to 5 , according to Himabindu. While the other eight government primary schools and two high schools have their own buildings, MPPS Gabbilalpet operates out of a small rented space and has already reached its full capacity.
With residents continuing to advocate for a bigger school from nursery to Class 12, following intervention from the Telangana Education Commission formed under the Revanth Reddy government, four acres of land were sanctioned by the Medchal-Malkajgiri district Collector in July 2025. However, a few individuals soon claimed ownership of the land and filed a writ petition in the Telangana High Court.
Four people filed the petition claiming that the land belongs to them. On July 31, 2025, the court gave interim orders directing the district administration not to dispossess the petitioners of the land until further examination.
With the land stuck in litigation, and a new academic year soon approaching, residents of Gabbilalpet and the surrounding areas demanded that the government either urgently resolve the legal issues over the previously sanctioned land, or sanction alternative land in the immediate vicinity to establish a Telangana Public School.